“Do not economize on the hymeneal rites; do not prune them of their splendor, nor split farthings on the day when you are radiant. A wedding is not house-keeping.”

“He had, like everyone else, his suffix ist, without which nobody could have lived in those days, but he was neither a royalist, nor a Bonapartist, nor a chartist, nor an Orléanist, nor an anarchist; he was an old-bookist.”

“Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.”

“A good mayor is a useful person. How can you hold back when you have the chance to do good?”

“Argot is nothing more nor less than a wardrobe in which language, having some bad deed to do, disguises itself. It puts on word-masks and metaphoric rags.”

“All of you, all who are present--consider me worthy of pity, do younot? Good God! When I think of what I was on the point of doing, Iconsider that I am to be envied.”

“Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.”